Homeless Man Dies While Subway Surfing After Smoking Synthetic Weed

3 years ago

(Ben Yakas) Yesterday, a homeless man suffered a fatal head injury after subway surfing atop a 6 train in Manhattan. That 45-year-old man, who police haven't yet identified, climbed between cars and atop the downtown 6 train near the 96th Street station just around noon on Wednesday; he spread out his arms, then hit a steel bar and suffered head trauma. And the man had reportedly been smoking synthetic marijuana before the incident.

Pablo Reyes, 45, identified the man as Grumps, a panhandler who has been homeless for about a year, and may have been staying at a shelter on West 25th Street. "He was hanging out getting high," Reyes told the News. "I told him, ‘Stop getting high off that s**t. It ain’t no good for you. He probably was hallucinating." Reyes was a witness to the fatal incident as well: “He was standing up with his hands open. He saw the beam coming. He laid down. He tried to duck down. It opened his head right up.“